Terry Lee Erwin (December 1, 1940 – May 11, 2020) was an American

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

with the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. Erwin went to Vallejo High School and then graduated in biology in 1964, followed by a masters in 1966 from San Jose State College (now

San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sys ...

). He went to the University of Alberta to study carabid beetles under George Ball, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1969 followed by a post-doctoral stint at Harvard under P. Jackson Darlington, Jr. He took up an entomologist position in the United States National Museum (later the Smithsonian Institution) but took a year off to study

carabid Ground beetles are a large, cosmopolitan family of beetles, the Carabidae, with more than 40,000 species worldwide, around 2,000 of which are found in North America and 2,700 in Europe. As of 2015, it is one of the 10 most species-rich animal fam ...

beetles at the University of Lund under Carl H. Lindroth. On return in 1971, Erwin was deputed to examine the beetles of Panama. By fogging the forest canopy with pesticide, he collected the falling specimens and found 1,200 species of beetles living in '' Luehea seemannii'' trees. Of those 1,200 species of beetles, he estimated that 163 are found only in the ''Luehea seemannii'' tree and not in other species of trees. There are about 50,000 species of trees in the tropics and beetles make up 40% of insects and related animals. Erwin estimated that there are about twice as many species of insects and related animals in tropical trees as there are on the ground of the forest. Erwin is notable for his controversial extrapolation of 30 million as the total number of arthropod species. Erwin served as secretary of the

Society of Systematic Biologists The Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) started as the Society of Systematic Zoology in 1947. A temporary constitution was adopted at the first meeting on 28 December 1947. The updated "biologists" organization (from "zoology") become incorpora ...

from 1973 to 1975, and was the editor in chief of ''

ZooKeys ''ZooKeys'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering zoological taxonomy, phylogeny, and biogeography. It was established in 2008 and the editor-in-chief is Terry Erwin (Smithsonian Institution). It is published by Pensoft Publ ...

''. He described over 20 genera and more than 400 species of insect, and as of 2015 is commemorated in the names of 47 species, two genera, one subfamily and one subspecies.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Erwin, Terry 1940 births 2020 deaths American entomologists American expatriates in Canada American expatriates in Sweden Coleopterists Harvard University staff San Jose State University alumni Smithsonian Institution people University of Alberta alumni 20th-century American zoologists 21st-century American zoologists American taxonomists